


Compost in Training, Graves Left to Fill

by kuklash



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dark Comedy, F/F, F/M, Forehead Touching, Oops, Partners in Crime, Reincarnation, i accidentally wrote a very dark romcom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 00:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21437308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuklash/pseuds/kuklash
Summary: As he unlocked his car, he heard the familiar click of a gun cocking.“Hi there, stud.” A woman’s voice. “You know, you’re not the person I was planning on robbing tonight, but I guess cash is cash.”“You aren’t gonna shoot me,” Murphy insisted, as he started to turn around.It was difficult for Murphy to know which came first; the sound or the pain. The last thing he saw was the girl’s face, unflinching in her brutality, as she leaned over his body to reach his wallet. The last thought Murphy had was of how strikingly beautiful her face tattoo was.
Relationships: Emori/John Murphy (The 100)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20
Collections: Chopped 2.0 Final Round





	Compost in Training, Graves Left to Fill

**Author's Note:**

> For the 100 Chopped Challenge Final Round. Prompts used are:  
1\. Reincarnation  
2\. Soulmates  
3\. Forehead Touches  
4\. Free Space - Partners in Crime
> 
> Title comes from the song "Misanthropic Drunken Loner" by Days n' Daze.

John Murphy was getting tired of catfishing. It was almost too easy to hit up online dating sites, make a fake account, then answer every cry for the super specific pizza toppings that apparently signified your soulmate. Murphy didn’t believe all the garbage about soulmates, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t cash in on the suckers that did. Sure, he had his official letter from the Arcadian government: “Jonathon Murphy, ID# 676747, Preordained Order: Mushrooms, One Single Pepperoni, Extra Cheese.” Honestly, his supposed soulmate sounded like a psychopath. Who orders just one pepperoni?

He clicked into another chatroom and found yet another desperate soul posting his soulmate order over and over, “any1 here like chicken and ranch?” Murphy started typing, fingers flying across the keys.

“hey McLovn69, thats my order!!1!”.

It only took a few minutes of back and forth for Murphy to convince McLovn69 of a few crucial things: that he knew his soulmate order and that he was a girl, not a dude looking for a mark. The fake order was easy enough; most of the desperate dudes just had a ton of meat on their order and after a few generic meat comments they usually ended up just outright telling him. Their date was set for ten o’clock, at a small cafe just outside of TonDC.

Too easy.

Murphy grabbed his handgun from his desk as he sauntered out of his small apartment and into Polis’s inner city. Moving here after his stint in juvie for a small breaking and entering charge had been a smart call. He’d survived in the big city the same way he had in TonDC; stealing, scamming, and scumming around.

As he walked to his car, Murphy pulled out his burner phone and placed a call.

“Grounders, what do you need.” The voice on the line was harsh, but not gruff.

“Miller, it’s Murphy. I’ve got a mark and I need a favor”

“You always need favors, Murphy. I’ll stay open late for you tonight, but after this you need to find a new partner. I’m trying to run a legitimate business here.”

A few beats of silence.

“You know it’s hard enough for guys like us to even get a job, let alone run a semi-successful business. I can’t let you screw this up for me.”

A few more beats and Miller finally sighed.

“If you need a job, a real job, you can start here next week., But if a single cent is missing from the register you’ll be out on your ass again.”

“The dude’s supposed to be there at 10, but I’ll be there at 9 to set up in case he’s an eager beaver and shows up early.”

The line clicked as Miller hung up.

Murphy realized he really was considering taking Miller up on his offer. As much as he hated to admit it, he was making less and less off each robbery. People had mostly stopped carrying cash, and he could usually only make one or two quick purchases with a debit or credit card before they called in and canceled the card. The only way he was going to survive was to adapt, but bigger scores meant bigger risks, and Murphy wasn’t a fan of big risks.

Grounders was just short of an hour drive from Polis, plenty of time for Murphy to roll the pros and cons around in his head, but still not enough for him to come to any sort of solution. As he pulled up to the cafe, he spotted Miller waiting outside, cigarette dangling from his fingertips. He looked years older than the last time Murphy saw him, despite it only being months.

Murphy hopped out of the car.

“You look like shit, bud,” he commented loudly.

Miller scowled at Murphy, but still threw out his hand for the old gang shakel.

“Why don’t you talk to me again when you grow into that nose, Cockroach,” Miller snapped back, a slight smile twisting the corner of his lips.

Both of them laughed and Miller flicked his cigarette out as they stepped inside.

“He’s not gonna show, dude,” Miller insisted for the umpteenth time.

It was nearing midnight and the mark still hadn’t shown up. The cameras were set and ready, showing a loop of the closed cafe to cover the robbery, but the man just wasn’t there.

And Murphy was pissed.

It’s not like he wasted a ton of effort, but Miller was clearly equally mad that he wouldn’t be getting his cut.

Murphy brushed him aside, grabbed his coat and gun and stormed out of the cafe, ignoring his friend’s animated yelling financial compensation. As he unlocked his car, he heard the familiar click of a gun cocking.

“Hi there, stud.” A woman’s voice. “You know, you’re not the person I was planning on robbing tonight, but I guess cash is cash.”

“I gotta ask miss, is that a gun in your hand or are you just happy to see me?” Murphy asked, not lacking any of his trademark smarm, even with a gun pressed to his lower back. The girl let out a slight exhale of air, then pushed the gun even further into his back.

“You’ve sure got a pretty mouth. Now hand over the wallet and everything will be fine,” she demanded.

“You aren’t gonna shoot me,” Murphy insisted, as he started to turn around.

It was difficult for Murphy to know which came first; the sound or the pain. The bullet tore through his chest, and he collapsed to the ground, coating the car with his blood. Murphy gasped for air, but nothing came. The last thing he saw was the girl’s face, unflinching in her brutality, as she leaned over his body to reach his wallet. The last thought Murphy had was of how strikingly beautiful her face tattoo was.

John Murphy woke up in a hospital bed, the pale luminescence of the lights shining off the stark white walls. He couldn’t believe it. He survived.

Murphy pulled the sheets off his body and swung his feet towards the floor. His legs looked paler than he remembered, but that thought was swiftly thrown from his mind as those legs crumbled below him. The IV ripped from his arm as he collapsed to the floor.

“FUCK!”

His voice was hoarse, throat so dry he could hardly rasp out the word. He began crawling towards the door, desperate for something to drink. Just as he drew close enough to reach it, the door opened, abruptly slamming Murphy in the head. Another “Fuck!” sprung from his mouth as the nurse screamed, dropping the medical equipment she was bringing in. The tray landed on Murphy, bringing with it yet another “Fuck!”

“Oh my god, Mr. Jordan,” the nurse apologized. “I had no idea you would wake up!”

“My name’s not Jordan, lady, it’s Murphy. Get your charts right,” Murphy groaned.

“Oh god sir, I’m so sorry. I think I may have given you a concussion,” she said as she rushed out of the room. “I’ll go get Dr. Tsing!”

“Yeah that’s fine, I’ll just stay here. On the ground. Behind the door,” Murphy yelled after her.

Only a few moments later, a doctor flanked by two large nurses entered the room.

“Mr. Jordan, welcome back to the land of the living,” the Doctor said as the two nurses lifted Murphy from the floor to the bed.

“Aw, come on, boys! I was just getting comfortable on the floor,” Murphy chided weakly.

"Apologies, Mr. Jordan, we simply weren't expecting you to wake up after an eight month coma," the doctor explained.

That's when Murphy caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror across from the bed. But it wasn't him. The face staring back was thin and ghastly white, with sunken eyes and a shaved head. He also had a terrible goatee. Like, really bad. In short, he was no longer the handsome devil he once was. He looked like some sort of gangly meth addict.

Murphy realized the doctor was still talking. Unfortunately. He had to find a way out of here.

Leaving the hospital was not the grand adventure he expected it to be. He simply signed a form and walked out the front door. What was more interesting was what he found when he walked out of the hospital: a strikingly attractive woman with a really cool face tattoo.

Murphy followed her down the street until she turned a tight corner into a side alley not far from his apartment.

When he turned the corner, he found a gun in his face.

"What the fuck do you want you creep?" she shouted.

"What are you gonna do? Shoot me again?" Murphy laughed in her face.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she yelled, brow furrowed.

“You just shot me. In the chest. It got blood all over my car. Do you know how long it’s gonna take me to clean that shit?”

She looked at him, confused. Murphy, clearly amused with his own behavior, reached up and pushed the gun out of his face.

“Who are you?” she asked, stumbling backwards. “I’ve never seen you before. How do you know all this?”

“Fuck if I know, babe. You shot me and I woke up as some crackhead looking guy named Jordan.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, desperate to make sense of the chaos.

“Because no one will ever believe you,” Murphy intoned dramatically, looking her deep in the eyes. His grin still felt slightly wrong on his new face.

Murphy woke up in a shitty apartment, Emori still asleep in his arms. He learned her name the same day he met her outside the hospital. The two of them actually did hit it off, after they got past the whole murder thing. She ended up inviting him back to her place, and one thing led to another.

Emori was also the one who helped him find out that his new body, Jasper Jordan, was not a recovering drug addict. Well… he was. But not _just_ a recovering drug addict. He was also a renowned chemist who made some huge scientific discovery that Murphy didn’t care about. What he did care about was Jordan’s multimillion dollar bank account and an equally big life insurance policy. Murphy planned to cash in.

It was fairly easy to change the benefactor of his policy to “City of Light”, the fake charity that Emori set up to “help the underprivileged in Polis”. To be fair, it _was_ helping the underprivileged: Murphy and Emori. Now all they needed was for Murphy to die.

The two of them walked into the alley where they met near the hospital.

“Are you sure, John?” Emori asked. “We don’t know for sure if you’ll come back.”

Murphy looked her in the eyes, leaning in close to bump his forehead comfortingly against her own.

“Don’t worry, babe. I’m a survivor. I’ll even survive this.”

He gave her one last quick kiss and handed her his old gun. “No one will look for shooter John Murphy when he’s been dead for months.”

Murphy took one last bite of the pizza they’d ordered. It was plain cheese, a far cry from his favorite of ham and pineapple, but they’d agreed to get a “neutral” pizza to avoid any discussion of soulmate nonsense. He threw his wallet to Emori.

“Do it,” he said, mouth still full of pizza. Emori squeezed her eyes closed and pulled the trigger. Once again, the last thing he saw was Emori’s face, before bleeding out in the alley

Murphy was watching TV when he heard Emori unlock the door to their house and walk in, keys jingling in her hand.

“The strange phenomenon of the past year seems to have passed, with one suspect in custody. According to the Polis Police Department, eleven people woke up from comas over the course of twelve years, then met their deaths shortly after at the hands of the same serial killer. The doctor in charge of the patients, Dr. Lorelei Tsing, has been arrested for malpractice after it turned out that she was medically inducing comas in an attempt to study the strange case, resulting in the death of Ashe Azgeda, known as Echo to her friends, who tragically died when Dr. Tsing accidentally injecting her with too much Propofol, killing the poor girl. The only surviving coma patient is Raven Reyes, a mechanic, who currently resides in Shallow Valley, with her wife ---”

Murphy turned the TV off, throwing the remote onto the coffee table and standing up to greet Emori.

“I’m on the news, babe,” he beamed. “And this time it wasn’t for being dead.”

“Trust me, that’s the best news I’ve heard today,” Emori said with a sweet smile. They had finally decided to settle down with this current body and live off of the settlement they won in reparations from Tsing. All it took was a few fake tears from Murphy, some finger pointing from Emori after she started volunteering at the hospital, and boom: enough money to live out the rest of their lives comfortably in the suburbs.

“I’m pretty happy with this one,” Murphy said, flashing his signature grin. It didn’t feel off in this body, almost like this girl used to have a similar smile of her own.

“Trust me, John,” Emori purred. “I’m definitely a fan, too.”

“I know, right? I’m goddamn sexy now!” Murphy responded, with a sultry look. He took his wife by the hand, practically dragging her to the bedroom.

Murphy had to admit, life was good. Even if someone eventually got suspicious, the safe hidden behind a portrait in the hall held all the money they had collected in insurance from his past lives. Enough money to keep running forever.

Maybe they could go to Hawaii. They did make good pizza there, or so he had heard.

The familiar sound of the doorbell arrested their movement towards the bedroom. Emori furrowed her brow. “Who could that be?”

“Oh, I ordered pizza,” Murphy said dejectedly, heading towards the door. “The one time they show up on time...”

The delivery boy rattled off the delivery order as Murphy dug for some cash.

“Alright, I got one ham and pineapple and one mushroom, extra cheese with a single pepperoni.”

Murphy paid the kid, giving him a typically stingy tip and turned around to find Emori practically breathing down his neck.

“I never told you my order, John,” she said, eyes wide.

“I know.” He gave her another wolfish grin. “It’s the order from my card. Way back in my first life. It was my soulmate order.”

Emori blinked at him, tears forming in her eyes even as a smile crossed her lips.

“I always knew my soulmate would be a psychopath, I just never figured she’d kill me the first time we met.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I really don't care for soulmate AUs so I came up with the most ridiculous one I could think, but I actually like how it turned out! I was pretty stressed for time on this, but I think it makes for a really fun/dark rom-com!


End file.
